The Canadian Venture Capital & Private Equity Association (CVCA) and its member firms plan to court major global investors next month in Toronto as they convene in the city for Prime Minister Mark Carney’s Canada Investment Summit.
The news: The CVCA announced on Thursday the speakers attending its invitation-only event, which is happening on Sept. 14. Participants in the Canadian Global Growth Forum include Cyrus Madon, private equity (PE) group chair at Brookfield Asset Management, Camilla Languille, co-CEO of Mubadala’s PE platform, HarbourVest Partners CEO John Toomey, and Sagard chair and CEO Paul Desmarais III, among others. They will be joined by other senior investment leaders from across Canada, the United States, China, Malaysia, France, and Australia. High-profile Canadian tech leaders like Cohere co-founder and CEO Aidan Gomez, Wealthsimple co-founder and CEO Michael Katchen, and Kepler Communications co-founder and CEO Mina Mitry are also set to speak.
From the source: As part of the event, local PE and venture capital (VC) fund managers will meet privately with investment heavyweights from around the globe and sell them on investing in Canada. According to The Globe and Mail, the Canada Investment Summit, which will begin that evening, is expected to welcome executives from nearly 100 global investors across 28 countries, who collectively manage almost $120 trillion.
The context: The Canadian Global Growth Forum has been in the works for some time. As The Globe reported last week, the two events are not formally linked—the CVCA forum arose from PE and VC leaders seeking a greater role in the Canada Investment Summit, which hopes to attract new investment to advance nation-building projects and grow the country’s economy.
Final thought: For Canadian PE and VC funds, the chance to pitch prospective big-name limited partners on home turf is acute: Carney’s September summit is the first of its kind in Canada, and will draw the sort of guest list typically only seen in Switzerland or the US.
Feature image courtesy Josh Scott for BetaKit. Photos by Toronto Tech Week, BDC, and Elevate.